OK. Well, I'm just gonna go, I'm just gonna rift then off of no slides and talk about how to create a holistic approach to learning for the future of work. So, so you guys can see my desktop. I'm just gonna stop sharing this. This isn't working for me.So I'm just gonna stop sharing, sorry about that guy, everybody. Um So we're going to talk today about the holistic learning for the future of work. So my name is Jennifer Sang and I am a chief of staff and a certified le leadership coach at Cisco Systems. And I have been in learning and development organization for over 20 years. And one of the biggest questions I have always asked myself was how do we integrate the skills that we provide to our employees and our customers and how do we integrate all of those things together and creating this holistic approach has always been something that I've been very passionate about.

So one thing I want to level set first before we go on to how to create the holistic approach is how do we define the future? And for me, the future starts with intentional actions that we take today. So I know a lot of us, especially in corporate, we're always thinking about what are the six month goals? What are the 12 month goals? What are the three year goals? It's important to have an idea of where we want to go, but to create intentional actions today in this moment. So when we talk about the future of work, I want you guys to think about what are some things that we can do today. So to level set, the way we work and learn has drastically changed. So, over the pandemic, I think it's taught us that we can really learn and we can work anywhere at any time. Um And that it is possible that we can also connect. So I think it's important as we're thinking about a holistic approach to learning is understanding that there are these different components of how we work and how we connect. But also that the speed of technology is changing the way that we learn process and retain information.

I can remember when I started in my career, 20 years ago, we would have, you know, five day, you know, two week long instructor led training, you would be, you know, head down, heads down in a class for two weeks and then you would take a test and you would move on to your job, the way that we have learned has fundamentally changed.

And there's been some neuroscience research of how our brains have actually been rewired and how we actually learn differently today. Think of youtube, think of tiktok, think of just in time learning. We don't maybe necessarily need to be an expert in something. But if we want to have an understanding of maybe uh a small part of a topic, we can go and find that information quickly when, before the internet, that wasn't really possible. So we have to understand when we're creating a holistic uh approach to learning, is that how we work has changed and how we are learning has changed as well. And as we continue on through this process, I know that um the the theme for the conference has been purpose and impact. So I want you to also be reflecting on what is your impact because I think that's a really important component in learning is what is your individual impact and being really connected and understanding what that is because as you might feel, I know I have felt this many times even in my career is that learning feels fragmented and oftentimes it feels transactional.

So what happens next? You go through leadership program, you learn all of these great skills and then you are expected to go back into the workforce and implement them. The gap for me is how do we start to integrate those skills and how we start to integrate them is by creating learning that is more holistic and looking at people as a whole holistic learning for me means we're acknowledging ourselves and others as whole people. So that's including cognitive flexibility. How do we learn and how do we adapt our learning, neurodiversity, people who have different ways of learning our own levels of confidence, our past experience, our diversity. And most importantly, for me is intrinsic motivation. What lights you up, what makes you love, what it is that you love? What do you gravitate towards having a really strong understanding of that is a great way to help shape that holistic learning for yourself. And if you're learning in development, practitioners or architects having, helping people connect to that is valuable because that will keep them motivated as they grow up, go throughout the journey and people want a path. So a lot of the work that I do at Cisco in my career has been helping to define that path for employees. So understanding a role and what it takes to get you from a junior level area of that role to a senior level.

And we do that with a mix of education, experience, exposure and support. Think back to any new skill that you've ever developed. I like to think back to when I learned to ride a bike, we, you know, our support system, our caregivers or whoever taught you how to ride a bike, doesn't show you a video of how to ride a bike and then just expect you to go out and do it. There is a lot of different steps along the way. There's a lot of people, a lot of kids nowadays start with balance bikes or training wheels. And we get kind of a sense and a feel for what it feels like to balance. And then over time after we practice and have more experience, we start to take off those training bills and the kids also fall. I remember falling many times as a kid riding my bike. And do we have that support there to help kind of help guide and help shepherd you through that process as you're learning to develop a new skill? So for me creating a holistic approach to learning is about creating learning journeys and learning experiences. And I'm a big advocate advocate for helping people core that learning journey. So within Cisco, when we have created learning journeys for employees, we bring resources from within the business to help us shape and imagine what that learning journey will look like.

But if you are a solo rene or you don't have maybe the budget to create learning journeys, we also work a lot with managers to help them help define what that learning journey looks like for each individual employee. So you can ask them questions like what did you love doing last week? What have you noticed that lights you up? What drains your energy? What do you tend to avoid? We can help core and shape that journey? For the employees when we get curious and when we have a mindset of grow growth and co creation. So I know that there are small ways that we can help shape that journey for each and every person. And if you don't, if you're like an entrepreneur and you don't have, you know, a corporation or a manager core the learning journey for yourself, ask yourself these questions, start paying attention and noticing what's coming up for you. What are you gravitating towards? What do you find yourself really um connecting with and what are some things that just really drain your energy and start to make adjustments along your journey that will eventually lead you to that impact that we all want to make. So for me, again, creating a holistic learning um approach is about how we acknowledge the whole person and how we can identify and access intrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation.

Again, is that that thing inside of you that you just, you have that drive towards something you, you feel really excited, you feel really packed about the more we can continue to define and refine what that looks like for each one of us. And if we're in, in a learning and development organization, if we can help define that for each employee and for the business, it'll create more of that holistic approach that goes beyond just serving information to people and expecting them to then have the skills or have the ability to integrate that into their workplace.

So going back to my initial question, you know, what, as you're reflecting on, what is your impact, I think that the more we can create this journey and this approach to seeing our lives and all of the learning that we accumulate over time as having purpose and having an impact, we can make real impactful change on ourselves and others.

Um And I also want to say that beyond, you know, the workplace, I have been on my own personal development journey for many, many years. And I've noticed that there is this, this journey about it. It's not about getting to this place of wanting to understand or have the skill or do the thing. I strongly believe that people want to have meaning. And the question that I hear most in coaching conversations that I have with people is they're asking, do you see me and do I matter? Those are two really important questions as we're thinking about, how do we create a more holistic approach to how we learn and how we help guide people and guide ourselves along the journey to get to the place where we can have that impact and have that purpose?