Lumina Learning: A Foundation for Growth and Development

There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortez. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortez. I'm your host, Elise Cortez, John Julie from Dallas, Texas, which is home base for me. This program is all about helping people more meaningfully and productively connect with their work and equipping leaders to cultivate meaning and purpose in the workplace, to elicit passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance within the organization. So I seek out and bring on guests of a particular perspective or experience that I think contributes to or expands the conversation. And as a management consultant and social scientist, I draw the meeting and work and identity research I've been doing over the last fifteen years, as well as my experience consulting, speaking and developing workforces across the globe. I hope you got the show live last week. If you didn't, you can always catch it recorded podcast. We were on the air with Aaron Hurst. He is the foremost expert on a science of purpose at work. He is the author of the Purpose Economy and he's the CEO and co founder of Imperative, the technology platform for leaders in the new economy. We talked about the history of how we arrived in the purpose economy, which was fascinating, why purpose is so important in individuals and within organizations, and how whole new markets can be created through a purpose driven lens. If this conversation does not convince you of the importance of finding your own purpose or leading your company from it, nothing will. It was fantastic with us this week is Rebecca Bales, who is a global partner for Luminal Learning, which is a talent development organization with leading edge solutions in people development through personal leadership, organizational and sales assessments and programs. As partner of the Americas, Rebecca is a catalyst for change from the inside out, where her expertise and personal and organizational transformation assist people to create successful and lasting growth initiatives through aligning the inward processes that create outward behaviors. She is the author of Step Up to the Plate, The Power of Passion and Determination, which focuses on personal change and transformation, and she is also the co author with doctors Ken Blanchard and Depot Chopra, of Roadmap to Success. We'll be talking about her own personal connection to her work, how she has used the assessments to catalyze real change and growth and people and organizations, and some of the specific product products that she uses within organizations. She joins it today from Plano, Texas. Rebecca, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Elis. It's a pleasure to be here, isn't it great? I'm so glad if finally have you around the mic. If we will, well, let's start first. I like to I'd like to help our listeners understand how I find my guests. And so you and I met in two fifteen in only hip program that we were each partaking up for ourselves our own development, and that was through Leadership America. And I wanted to say that I think that's an amazing organization. I've had them on my radio show. Yeah, you know right. I've had my radio show before and they have really been fantastic and cultivating leadership across the nation and for the world for that matter. So let's start if we can. Since we're talking about development today, why do you think it's important, Rebecca, for people, certainly leaders, to continue developing themselves. Well, you know, a leaders, they have to be lifelong learners. You know, the best leaders that I've ever come across in my career are like sponges. They absorb feedback, they absorb input from others, They absorb ideas and new ways of doing things. And if a leader ever ends up that they stop their learning. You know, they may be good at what they do for now, but they will eventually get passed by by others who are staying on the cutting edge of new development. So it's kind of like you can continue with what brought you here, but that is not going to get you to the next level. So it's really a never ending process. But that's what keeps us fresh and growing and learning because life never stops evolving. It changes in a nanosecond, and I think all of us can have had some experience or another with that, and so that's why it's so important for us to continue the learning process and not ever feel like we're done, you know, And this is so important because the average person will spend in a lifetime over ninety thousand hours at work, and that's a huge amount of time in your life. So, you know, we need to love what we do and do what we love, or what's the point? In order to do those things and embrace those things, we need to be in that space of continuing to have our eyes opened and continuing to see new and different things. I completely agree, and I might add that my perspective on learning. Obviously, you and I are both in the learning and development space. This is what we do, This is our camp. But for people just considering, you know, why should I do this? Why why should I keep learning? I would add too that I think it's really important for people to cultivate an ongoing curiosity about themselves and about other people. People think I got this, I've already been through a million assessments or many many workshops or whatever. What can you teach me that I don't already know? Well, I would offer that it's important to get into that space with an open mind and some curiosity, because people do learn new, brand new things about themselves when they're fifty, sixty, seventy, and eighty years old. It never stops. Yes, yes, And besides all that, it's fun. It is fun, and it's you know, just being curious and going through life. Curious is what makes us learn and grow, and it actually is kind of what develops our brain and our mind where it becomes, you know, more highly developed, and we use that mind to a fuller extent when we're more curious. Agreed, Well, let's talk about Lumina Learning. Who you're working with. I know this company obviously, because I'm happy to say that I'm certified in some of your products and I use them in my own work to develop leaders, but our listeners may not know who you are. So would you say a little bit about Lumina Learning? Who is it? What do you do? Sure? Absolutely so. Lumina, as you mentioned, is a global talent development organization. The headquarters is in London and Lumina has a presence in over forty four countries, so it really is truly a global approach. The talent development solutions that Lumina has are translated into multiple languages, and there are a suite of integrated tools and solutions and we believe that's really important in offering the right suite of products to your organization and not trying to do a one off from this methodology and then bringing in something else over here. You never get a consistency within the organization and what they're learning or that supports the underpinning of the culture. So Luminous mission is really to change the way we live and work, to strive to disrupt talent development by revolutionizing the world of assessment tools. At the center of each of our learning solution, it's underpinned by a different, completely different assessment tool, yet they're all integrated and connected in a certain way. So that means that Lumina is able to offer a fresh new approach. We're based on the latest technology. Our solutions are designed to have an agile approaching application. And yeah, I live here near you a lease and we've been honored to have you in several of our courses and sitting in on some of the qualifications that we've had here. You bring such a que perspective and your input is always so welcomed and loved. Seeing the work that you do with your clients, we as well work with some global clients. And then I also lead in manage qualification classes across the US and support of our global clients and practitioners and their resources here awesome. That is a very nice way to orient people to what the company does and what you do within it. And so next, since you know, this show is all about meaning and purpose and I like to get a little personal with my guests and share them with the listeners who are listening from across the globe, I love that part of it. If you would, you know, we're talking today about the work that we each do to catalyze others to their higher potential, and I want to understand your particular connection and approach to the work you do. And you distinguish yourself as catalyzing change from the inside out. I think that's just fantastic. Would you say more about your connection to your work, your approach to it. Absolutely so. What I aim to do personally and through my work with Lumina is to help people transform themselves because life is so ever changing. I don't know about you at least, but the path that I thought I started walking down in my personal life ended up taking some abrupt turns and things that I wasn't prepared for. Things that I didn't know what I was going to be doing, and I really essentially had to kind of remake myself, get to know who I was outside of being you know, somebody's wife, somebody's mother, somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, you know, really get to know who I was and why I was here. And so just like that was for me, it is like that for everybody that's out there. We have to know what our emotions and triggers are that are at the core of who we are inside, not just our outward behaviors. So often we look at those outward behaviors, but if we don't look deeper and deeper inside at what's triggering us. And these triggers tend to be created by our own needs and our own motivators, and so those things create emotions, which create triggers and then drive those outward behavior. So it's really that three step process looking way down internally to make lasting behavioral change, you know it would. Lumina itself has a pathway, which is about knowing yourself, knowing others than valuing diversity to build better report So in a way, sort of segments that at a personal level, building into that knowing yourself in order to know others. Oh my gosh, that's gorgeous. I love how you generated that, Rebecca, that's just gorgeous. If that doesn't mean you want to make people want to get into our field, I don't know what's going to do it well. And then I was really intrigued, Rebecca. I loved how you write. This is on your LinkedIn profile, and I think it might be on one of your other profiles, but you've seen it. What makes you tick is to see the unique talent of individuals shine and pull together, creating an end result that's bigger and better than the sum of the parts alone, which is gorgeous. And I know that fostering a culture, a culture of collaboration, connectionness, is really important to you. There's trust, value, inclusiveness, all this stuff as part of your sauce, if you will. But I want to understand how all of that resonates with who you are and how you do your work. You've already somewhat situated it, but that is very specific what you're calling out there right right, And you know there's really one thing at the core of all of this, a lease, and that is when that people will come alive when they feel valued. It's about helping others and yourself feel valued. So all this starts with a sense of self nurturing. It's being compassionate to who you are. You deserve to be valued for your contributions and what you're doing. It's a basic instinct and a basic need that we all have need to be valued. We have it from the time we were an infant and we will have it into our twilight years. That never changes. It's just a basic need. So it's feeling. You know, we hear so much about the disengaged workforce today and that it's stagnant, and it's just actually staggering the percentage of the workforce that is not engaged at the time, and so they just go to work fulfilling a job so that they can go home and bring a paycheck. And the main reason is is because we're not really honoring each other, We're not seeing each other for the true value that they have. So I like helping people see themselves and see others at a deeper level. I call that deeper diversity, and that's really what lights me up. It's kind of part of me and it's a calling I've had all my life, and now it's what I'm doing for a living. I'm really getting to live my dream, so to speak. I know that may sound cliche, but I do what I love doing. In twenty twelve, I believe it was I wrote the book Step Up to the Plate, The Power of Passion and Determination. And what was really cool about this is that that book. In that book I put the transformative process and I wrote about it, and it's one I used on myself years ago, that one that when I needed to find out who I was and what I was doing, and so I wrote it in this book. And about a year later, I had the opportunity to be invited to Sweden to speak to a group of women in business. So I spoke to the group and then they took me back a few months later and asked me to lead this today retreat for them and we called it Rejuvenation of the Soul. And I was working with about twenty five women in business from across Sweden and they were all, you know, C suite level, they were professionals, they had young children, small children, they were exhausted and it they came to get that rejuvenation and to find out you know again, who were they to get back to who they were, not just this accountant or CPA or attorney or a VP of engineering, but who were they as an individual? And that's just you know that, that's what turns my light on. That's what makes me just get up in the morning, is being able to do this for as many people as I can. So you know, in the future, at some point I'd love to do another experience like that, But right now I'm getting the opportunity to help so many people have the tools that can enable them to go out in the world and do that very thing within their organization or their team. How gorgeous. And I want to acknowledge a couple of things really quick here, And one is how wonderful that you get to what I would call live your purpose. You've you, you heard your You've been able to incorporate it into your work, and you're one of those lucky souls, blessed souls that gets to live your purpose. And I think that scourge is just nothing cliche about that, not from my manage point anyway, as I'm trying to activate that across people across the globe. And secondly, Rebecca, I really want to say that I have seen you. I've witnessed you. You have an amazing ability, and I do think it's your calling to uniquely really see people for who they are and celebrate them for their uniqueness and help them to reach across to them, to activate them to become more of who they can become. I'm seeing you do that time and time again. Thank you. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And then the last thing I'll say is back to what you said about people being valued the importance of that. I learned that, Rebecca, when I was working for the Center for Talent Solutions for a couple of years doing employee engagement work and we would do assessments and the number one variable that people would report as important was value and appreciation. So I learned that in doing that work and just being able to tell someone you know how it is that they make a difference to you as the leader, to the organization, to the team, and being able to vocalize that there's a talent in that that needs to be developed in leaders especially, and when we do that well, it makes a really big difference to people's engagement, fulfillment, and connection. Absolutely. Wow. Well with that, let's grab our first break here, I'm your host, Elis Cortez, who've been on the air with Rebecca Bales, who is a global partner for Luminal Learning, a talent development organization with leading edge solutions and people development through personal leadership, organizational and sales assessments and programs. She's the author of a Step up to the Plate, The Power of Passion and Determination, which focuses on personal change and transformation. She is co author with doctors Ken Blanchard and Deepak Chopra in Road to Success. She joins today from Plano, Texas. We've been talking a bit about her, the company she works with, Lunar Learning, as well as her own connection to the work. After the break, we're going to get into some real world SNAr is of how her coaching has made a difference to developing organizations across the globe. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Elise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement performance. And retention. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is Rebecca Bales, who is a global partner for Lumina Learning, a talent development organization with leading edge solutions and people development through personal leadership, organizational and sales assessments and programs. As partner of the America's, Rebecca is a catalyst for change from the inside out, where her expertise in personal and organizational transformation assists people to create successful and lasting growth initiatives through aligning the inward processes that create outward behaviors. We've been talking about about her own connection to work and what the company Lumina Learning does. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. So, Rebecca, before we get into some of the work that you've done to coach executives and develop organizations, it probably makes a little bit of sense here at this point to distinguish the product line just a little bit. So going back to Lumina, I know you've had the chance and so am I to work with other numerous assessments and development organizations. Why Luminate? What's different about lumined that specifically keeps you there? That's a great question. At least you know, first and foremost Lumina walks their talk. I have been and you probably have two part of people development organizations in the past who don't. And it's a shame because how can you expect to teach other people to develop themselves and to honor and develop other people, yet not use this in your own culture. So that's first and foremost why Lumina. But secondly, it's luminous mission, and their mission was to create assessment tools that eliminate evaluative bias. So what that means is looking at the data gathered in the assessment to make sure that it's bias free, that the way the questions are asked doesn't lead you to want to lean towards one way or the other. And because of that, it limits the stereotyping that's created through assessment tool and the stereotyping. The reason it's so damaging is because it can limit others by placing a label on them. When we assign a label to somebody, we're accepting everything about that. And when we do that, that means we're accepting all of the things about that and not the things about the other parts. So when we look at something like this, let's just say labeling someone an extrovert or an introvert, there are good and bad that go to both, and we may eliminate somebody as a potential good salesperson or someone who might have the attributes to go into a sales situation or speak up and be a leader because they've been labeled an introvert. And those assumptions are more damaging than people can imagine. It makes it affect the way others treat them as well as they even feel about themselves. So I have numerous examples of how those things really don't have any credibility. For example, I was sharing a hotel room with a colleague in a very large city one during one work week, and I woke up to the sirens and the PA telling us to leave to the nearest stairwell. There was a fire, and we were on the seventeenth floor, so that wasn't going to be easy. She was far, far, far more extroverted in her behaviors than I am, so I have a much quieter side to me. I'm much more reflective. But when I woke up, she was pacing the floor and wringing her hands and saying, over and over, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And I went out and opened the door and stepped to the stairwell. And when I did and opened that door, smoke just bellowed out. And so I ran back, grabbed her and another colleague near us and said, come on, you know, get your purse and just that and let's go. And we started down the seventeen flight of stairs. And so that's a situation where having been labeled more introverted in my characteristics, one would say I wouldn't be able to take charge. But I was the one that took charge in that particular situation, even when there was someone much more extroverted, and he would typically stand up and take charge before me in other situations. So these kinds of labels can be very you know, that can can be very false as far as what you can really see in a person and what they're going to do. So Lumina has an entirely different approach to their assessment tools, and that's the other reason that I chose Lumina and believe in them. Wow. Well, first, let me acknowledge talk about a work adventure, Rebecca, Holy cow. I mean, of all the times in the years that I've stayed in hotels, I've never had to do that. I just either head off. Wow, goodness gracious, I'm really impressed with how it would a calm head that you kept for that. That's great. You can room with me anytime, rebect right, Okay, I prefer to be on the lower floors now, yeah, exactly, I got that. I wanted to chime in quickly. For me, for one, as a practitioner using these assessments. A couple of things that I really appreciate about it is that it's just so robust. I love the fact that it is based on the Big Five. I love the fact that the tool actually measures both ends of the psychometric quality. You can measure you know, both introversion and extraversion and beat beat and have both. I love that. I think that's so accurate and I also really appreciate that it measures our three personas are every day that we show up in the world of work and live in our underlying which is our true or more natural self, and then of course are overextended. So for me as a practitioner, being able to have access to that vastness, that robustness, for a person to be able to work with them, it's just it's like almost limitless what we can do. It seems absolutely awesome. Okay, well, I definitely want to share this. One of the things that you said in one of our last certification sessions together, you shared this incredible story about some work that you did coaching an executive that I think really illustrates the powerful effect that this work can have on people and inside the organizations that they serve. I think you know which one I'm talking about, Yes, I think so. Okay, So when I were just together a couple of weeks ago, you shared one in particulars. So if you would just share that whole story and just including how you met the person and the initial conversations and what transpired, that would be great. Okay, great said this particular individual, Let me just start by saying he is brilliant. He's brilliant and he's extremely successful, but like many brilliant, successful people, he did struggle with managing people. So he's brilliant at his functional areas functional role, but when he became a manager of other people and led a team, that was something he'd never been trained in, and so it was difficult. But he didn't didn't embrace that, you know, he really didn't see he was so brilliant and what he did and his contributions to the organization that he was reluctant to do the coaching work or to really change his pattern at all. He actually felt he didn't need it. He just thought he would persevere or without it because of the great contributions that he made. So when we met on that first day, I actually told him that this was going to be hard work for him because this was not something that was in his wheel house right, And I told him if he wanted to do the work, that I would be there by his side and I'd be as big as advocate and I would do whatever I could do to help him. But if he didn't want to do the work, then I didn't want to waste his time, my time, or his company his money, and so I asked him to just sit and think about that for a moment, and that I was going to go get a cup of coffee and a newspaper and i'd be back. So I left him alone for about fifteen minutes, and when I got back, I sat down. I asked if he'd made a decision, and he looked at me and said, yes, I want to do the work. So the interesting thing about this particular individual was I always do intake interviews before my coaching, and in interviewing his boss, his boss told me one day, he said, this chair that I'm sitting in here in my office, he should be in that one day because he's actually better than I am. But he will never sit here because he can't seem to get the people's skills right. So we, you know, we had a task in front of us, and his ability to see it and to say, Okay, this is something I want to do. You're going to give me the ticket for the bus home if I don't do it, but I'm choosing to do it, I think made a big difference for him. So he actually made that you know, decision himself, and then it was a matter of you know, about six to eight months where we were continuously meeting and working, and he did a complete turnaround. I put he had an engineering background, and I put it in a project format and I called it, you know people skills one point one, one point two, one point three, and we just worked through it. We even went so far as to talk about facial expressions and how people were feeling, to understand how an action or reaction he might have could affect those feelings, how you could read that on your face, How his team needs to be motivated. We talked about instead of him being the one to get to the end, couldn't he then rejoice in his team getting to the end and watching them and molding them and leading them. So there was a process. And actually on the last day that I worked with him, it was the day that I was going to be my last time to see him and cutting him lace. He told me that he had stopped because, ironically enough, he didn't know that his boss had told me that previously that he would never have his seat in his office. So this man came in and sat down and said, I stopped in and stuck my head in my boss's office on my way over here today Rebecca and I looked at him and I said, I'm going to have that chair next, and he did so he really did a turnaround. Oh my gosh. Well, I want to really bring this example home because I think it's really important for our listeners to really understand two things. One is that this is a person, a very brilliant person, a technical person, who was very reticent to this whole idea of coaching and didn't believe that he needed to change anything at all. He was very happy to guess the attention from his family that was his most important area of expertise and where he felt like he needed to make forth any effort and the rest. He really wasn't interested if people liked him or didn't like him. And it's really important that listeners understand that that he from his vantage point, you know, hey, I'm doing a great job. I don't care what other people think about me. Well, right, And the part that you helped him see was, well, it is important that people kind of have some more positive perspective on you and what you do because it matters to their performance, their motivation, and how they're going to be in their job and where you're going to go in this career, and that is a real testament record to your ability to coach and really use this material to really affect some incredible change in a person's life. And the other part that's important for people to get is you also did something really incredible and that in terms you knew because if the intake interviews that you did that this person you know loves you know, various sports and certainly baseball, and you knew that he was already been getting a couple of warnings from HR and so you told him, look, this is strike too, and we got we got one more to go. And there was something about the way he heard that, because you were so smart to put it into his camp in language that he could understand and unlock him that I think maybe from what I could tell from the first story that you gave us, that that was part of his willingness to open himself to the coaching. Yes, yes, well I think he opened himself to the coaching at the beginning, once I went for coffee and came back. But he also more fully opened and embraced it when he realized he had gotten strike two. Because he came in that day and I said, you know, tell me what happened this week? Nothing happened. Nothing happened as it now. You know when they called me, you had strike one. This week you had strike two, and you could just see it in his face that he got it. So I think putting things in the times that someone else can embrace, whether it be in a project type of plan or whether it be in a sports analogy, if that's what they're into, is huge and helping people, you know, really embrace the message. So I completely agree with that, And what I really want to echo for our listeners is for the people out there that are listening to this, going gosh, I've got someone on my team that sounds just like that, and I know he or she will never accept any coaching. I hope that gives you some glimmer of hope that there is maybe a way to reach that person really make a difference in their careers. And when you think that as a leader, you really have responsibility of forty percent of a person's life, you have a real ability to make an enormous change and difference in that person's life for the better if you can find a way to access that opening toward development. Right. And then the second piece I was going to say, is that if if you are someone listening to this going that kind of sounds like a little bit of my track record. Well, there's good news for you too, in terms of how you can receive development and coaching and the difference than it can make in your life working with the right person. I just wanted to echo those two things, right, so true. I just read an article from Forbes today talking about, you know, coaches and the way that it's changing for coaching going forward, and how that is beginning to or there it's predicted to begin to replace consulting because coaches have such a phenomenal impact in the work that they do on the success and trajectory of someone's career. Well, and I think everybody needs a coach, as you know. I have two coaches to serve completely different functions for me, and I need them both. And I am on on the path in the journey that I am now because of my coaches. I wouldn't be here without them. So anyway, obviously I'm I'm drinking my own kool aid, right, but I believe in this. And if we can really quick just to situate this, if you can share maybe one more sure an example of some work that you've done that showcases either what you've done with consultants or another organization to help our listeners better understand how this stuff works. Yeah, let me talk about another organization I worked with, and this was more of a team impact. So I was called into an organization that was restructuring and they were moving from a hierarchical organizational structure to a matrix structure, and the senior HR leader was task with actually blending North and South America into one combined unit. So there was a lot of innovation, a lot of new creation that was having to happen. And on the team I always do I'm giving myself away here. I always do these intakes and on the team interviews. Prior to my arrival to work with this particular team, I had made calls to all of them and asked them a series of questions and I had landed on one response that kept resonating with every single member of that team, and that was that there was a struggle with them having definitive job rale definitions. So they found that when they came back together for a team meeting, you team member A had been over here doing the same thing that team member D had been over in another area doing and they didn't realize it. Or team member A was asked what does team member B do? And she didn't know how to respond. So they were really struggling with this because of the newness of everything. So I had looked at you talked about the three personas of an individual, because the luminous approach to measuring personality and behavior is to look at the holistic person, which is the three layers, the underlying, every day and over extended. So in looking at the team leads, her underlying was inspiration driven, her every day was inspiration driven, and her over stinted was inspiration driven. So there's no doubt that they were struggling with these definitive, very specific job rale definitions. But she was brilliant at the reason she was there, which was to come up with something innovative and new and creative and out of the box. So she did that very well. But she was really struggling for this piece for the team, and the team was really suffering. And so in putting them, you know, kind of together as a team, we found that in their underlying there was two or three team members who were very very strong in the structure and the down to earth, the solid data. And so somebody on the team actually posed the question, what if you all created a focus group and wrote our job rale definitions. And they loved it, they embraced it, they did it, and that's what we did going forward. So this really helped the team and the team lead or realize the power of finding what really is available in the gifts and strengths in your team. And you may not even see it every day when you come to work. You may not even see it because it may not be something they're putting forward in the environment, in the everyday environment, but they may have a real aptitude for it in their underlying it's just that they didn't think it was called on for them, so they sort of put it on the shelf set of space. I think that is a brilliant example of what we talked about before, of your ability to help teams really see the uniqueness and the talents in the others and then activate that so that you have a team that's more diverse, more complete, and greater than some of its parts. Right, I mean, I think that's a perfect example of that. Right. All right, let's grab our last break here, Rebecca, I'm a last Corte as your host. We've run the air with Rebecca Bales, who is a global partner for Luminal Learning, a talent development organization with leading edge solutions and people development through personal leadership, organizational and sales assents in programs. She's the author of Step Up to the Plate, The Power of Passion and Determination, which focuses on personal change and transformation. She is also co author with doctors Ken Blanchard and Deepak Chopra in Roadmap to Success. She joins It to Day from Plano, Texas. We've been talking about some of the work and applications of these products in this company and Rebecca's work. After the break, we're going to get into some of the specific products that she uses within the organization and her work. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alis Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite a last to speak to your organization. Please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose if you're just tuning in. My guest is Rebecca Bales, who is a global partner for Luminal Learning, a talent development organization with leading EDG solutions and people development to personal leadership, organizational and sales assessments and programs. As partner of the America's Rebecca is a catalyst for change from the inside out. For her expertise in personal and organizational transformation assists people to create successful and lasting growth initiatives through aligning the inward processes that create outward behaviors. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. So for this last segment, Rebecca, what I wanted to be able to do because I don't know that listener maybe understand the full complement of the various kinds of products and assessments that you use their Lumina so before we were talking a bit about what distinguishes La Lumina overall, and we kind of touched a bit about we didn't say it out right, but luminous Spark is one of the assessments, and so if you could maybe start with you see if you could see a little bit first about luminous Spark, and then I want to get into a couple of the others as well. Absolutely so, luminas Spark is a behavioral trait and personality tool, so we are actually measuring twenty four behavior traits. It's based on the principle of the Big Five approach to measuring personality, which are the five factors of personality. The uniqueness of a Big five tool is that everything is scientifically and empirically measured, So it is not a typing tool. It's not designed to assign a letter or a number or a word or color to you. Is designed to actually highlight what behaviors you're using, and it measures its opposite independently. As you mentioned earlier, So Luminous Spark is our foundational assessment, kind of our flagship, if you will, and is a bottom up approach. So everything at the baseline of the assessment tool is measured, and that's for statistical validity purposes. Then we roll it up and we can look at the eight aspects of the personality and then layer over the top four colors for ease of communication. Gorgeous and so crisp. Now, for our listeners who don't know what big five is, can you distinguish that? For us, I can so Big five is as I mentioned, the five factors of personality. And back in the nineteen sixties when personality assessments and measurement was sort of fell out of favor, it was during the time period where we had classical conditioning, behavioral conditioning, and modification, and if you remember that with Pavlov's dog and ringing the bell and offering food, we thought we could condition people and so it didn't really matter what their natural preferences were or what their personalities were. And during this time it became a kind of quiet time for the development of any kind of assessment tools, and some of the colleges and universities decided it was a good time that instead of trying to take a model and make data fit into the model, let's just pull data. We have this whole university full of students. We can pull data from them, we can observe, we can ask some questions, we can pull it in a variety of ways and see what falls out and what fell out or five batches or five factors. And so that's where the Big five gets its name from, as these five factors of personality. And because of that, it's really the behavior traits. It's things that are servable and tangible and can be measured. It isn't about are you this kind of person or do you like to do these things there for your this kind of person? So it's just really a trites not type tool. Okay, great, fantastic. I know whenever I talk about I mentioned the phrase big five in front of a group, invariably somebody raises their hand says, what's that? Yeah? Okay, all right. We won't go into what the actroom actually stands for, but that's necessary. But what I do want to do if we can, You've already somewhat distinguished for us, Rebecca, a little bit about how like a luminous spark assessment might work. I think probably with what you did with the individual that you were coaching is some of that example, and what you did with that team that you just told us about before the break is a great example of that. But before we talk about the leader assessment, is there anything else you want a presence about how organizations use a luminous spark for individuals? Yes, I mean organizations use it in a variety of ways. So it's been used for on board. One of the reasons it's used for onboarding is because it can help create a culture of inclusiveness, and it can pull people together with the common language, help people understand more about their own behaviors and reactions and actions as well as those of others. So doing all of those things, many organizations have decided to implement it into an onboarding Then they can take that a step further and use it with teams and team development. So we can look at if this is you and you're on a team of ten and nine other people have their personal profiles or personal assessments in front of them, how does the team asself show up. So where is each individual sitting, what are the strengths they're bringing to the table with this team, and how can this team learn to interact and work together more effectively? How can that leader learn to manage this team and motivate this team more effectively and pull out strengths that even may come from an underlying persona of an individual if the team needs it to help achieve an immediate initiative. And then of course also looking at the overextended piece is huge. So the over extensions are what can derail leaders and what can derail individuals, And they're you know, climb up the corporate ladder so to speak. It doesn't have to be a straight up it can be you know, lateral as well. So looking at how do you maneuver, how do you build, report and influence others around you, your boss, your peers, your direct reports, and all that can be found within the Luminous Spark assessment. There's lots of ways that I've had the wonderful opportunity to use the assessment when I'm working with teams. But I have to say from you, Rebecca, one of my favorite ways to use Luminous Spark as what like with a new leader that's coming into a group and he or she's just just getting started and needs to needs to know and be connected to their new team, and they need to be connected to him or her. It's just been a fantastic way to really gel that process. I've loved that. So all right, we'll running out of time here, but I want it quickly. If you can see a little bit, if you will, about the leader assessment. How is that different from Luminous Spark? All right, great, So Aluminu Leader is designed as a leader self assessment, but it can also be a three sixty and it measures sixteen competencies of leadership. So we look at four domains of leadership and under each domain set four competencies. So that's actually measuring those competencies. And if you're using a three sixty, you get the feedback from others as well as your own, and that in that you're looking for the gap analysis and the trends that are involved. So am I typically getting lower scores on my direct reports than I am my peers and my boss And I'm managing up really well, but perhaps not down so well? What kinds of things do I need to shift and move into and learn to pull up or tune down if the case may be, in order to be a more effective leader in a given situation. So that's used in coaching and also used in leadership development programs. Our typical program would be more of an process not an event, and we might use lumina spark limin a leader three sixty in luminate emotion over a period of a year and come back and meet with those leaders or that group of leaders multiple times. And the same way, an organization can write that into their own internal program and use the assessment with it. Wonderful. Now you mentioned luminate emotion just quickly, like maybe a less than a minute. What's that one all about? So lumina emotion measures the emotional qualities one uses, so it actually integrates into spark if you want it to, and creates a forty forty quality model. But luminate emotion looks at the emotions and the triggers to those emotions that then drive our outward behavior. So if you want to look at it as us, emotion is looking inward and luminous spark is what is showing on the outside to others. So we use emotion to help people understand how to better manage their emotions, how to be agile with them, as well as then how to help others manage their emotions and be agile with them. I can't wait to get certified in that one, Rebecca, I can't wait, and I tell you coming up next. All right, Well, we're close to the edge here and I like to be able to give my guests the last word, if you will, Rebecca. So you know the show is about helping people across the globe more meaningfully in productive and connect with their work, and helping leaders really create an environment where people can really shine through purpose and meaning. What would you like to leave our listeners with, you know, I would say that whatever talent development programs or approach you use, whether they're internally developed or whether they're external programs, whether it's just you looking at yourself for your own self development, and listen, I've done that. I do that always in at least I know you do it too. It's something we can never stop doing. Just be sure that you don't use things that can create a bias, because those biases can affect your organizational culture. It can limit your people's ability to achieve success or even your own ability to achieve success. And be firm about this and stand up to it. So if there is a question on whether your organization is using something that stereotypes or that you know your culture has created a bias around. Be firm, be the voice that's heard on this subject. You know, if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll continue to get what you've gotten. So be bold enough to say we don't need to keep using the same old things. We don't need to continue to create a problem with disengagement. So be bold enough to say we need to do it a different way. There's new things out there. Technology is always developing. When you look for the newest things that everything we do, but we tend in assessment tools to look at the older things and the things that continue to underpin our world in a disengaged society or disengaged at work at least, so you know, look towards these new approaches and that's where you're going to make the biggest difference and help people to be happy and engaged. And that's just what I'd leave you with. I'd just challenge you to do that, Rebecca. Thank you. A great way to finish some real thought leadership in there. So I really appreciate you being on the show and getting to work with you with Lumina products and looking forward to more together. Thank you for being on the show. Rebecca, Thank you alais, I really appreciate it. If you want to learn more about Rebecca Bales and the work that she and or Tim are doing at Lumina Learning, check them out on their website. It's Lumina Learning dot com. So lu m I n a learning Lumina Learning dot Com and join us next week when we talk with Farhana Kazi, who is an award winning speaker and scholar on conflicts in the Muslim world. Her research covers political Islam, the origins and violent extremism, and women in war. We'll be talking about how we both use these views to be able to consider what's happening in the world, and she will actually tell us more about her work as a researcher and as a terrorism expert. So see it then remember that work is one third of our lives. Let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose featuring your host, Alice Cortez each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work