Earlier this month we held our first Future Talent Conference, at the Royal Opera House. It attracted over 500 of the UK’s HR leaders and our line up of speakers provided some thought-provoking and inspiring sessions.
One of our speakers was Dr Alan Watkins, CEO of Complete Coherence and author of Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership. He delivered a really energetic and engaging session that got everyone in the room fired up and talking about how they can improve their productivity. I feel compelled to share a few thoughts…
Alan believes the majority of the workforce operate at just 9% capacity. He talked about how we need to be wired for successful futures and acknowledged that learning and up-skilling is important, but if HR is to make a real impact on productivity it needs to support employees with their ‘vertical development’.
According to Dr Alan Watkins we need to control our thinking, feelings, emotions and physiology in order to generate better results. He says, “As human beings we have not yet accessed what we are truly capable of. If we can unlock this and develop ourselves – not just by learning new stuff but by developing ourselves – we can really flourish, and we urgently need to because the world is getting faster and more dynamic.
“The HR profession needs to keep an open mind and be curious about what’s out there. There’s a huge amount of knowledge and understanding available to us and HR professionals can help bring this stuff in and determine what will work in their organisation.”
Alan also touched on the nature of connectivity. He pointed out that whilst we live in an age where we are more connected through social media we are also much more disconnected from each other. He said, “We need to understand that we are in it together and develop the ability to properly leverage this. Until we start to look at this in detail and understand the boundaries we create we won’t be able to unlock the meaningful work that we all desire.”
What is clear in today's increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world is that we need to think differently – we need to be resilient and this means we need to start understanding and developing ourselves much better.
