Tell Us Your Name and What You Currently Do?
My name Is Paula Jane Cox, I am a Learning and Development consultant, based in the UAE, working across all GCC countries and Arab states.
Tell Us More About Your Background?
My Initial career was in Sales, with a great foundation and training from Yellow Pages, then British Telecom owned, in the UK. This training has stuck with me my whole career, and was certainly an inspiration for me later on. I stayed in Media and Publishing, working and living in varied global destinations and rising to Director Level.
I morphed into Learning and development solely some 15 years ago. Working predominately for myself and as a consultant globally.
I have had the benefit of working in so many industries, and ultimately soon became passionate about people. I have bought, run and sold Hotels, Restaurants and Publishing companies along the way.
Tell Us More About Your Company?
I have my own business here in Dubai, but I am also the official Lumina Learning Partner for the Middle East. I plan and facilitate Lumina Learning workshops and integrate against learning needs, also I am here to accredit other trainers and organisations to use the tool themselves.
What Is The Best Learning and Development Strategy You Have Implemented With Lumina Learning?
Lumina Spark is very much a development based tool, it is a fix all self-awareness personalised portrait, so it has had huge success across the globe in so many areas, but I have to say the outstanding one of many here in the Middle East was with a local finance organisation. The challenge was to realign V.P’s who had arrived at their levels by various means, time served, and family name or wrongly placed. It was a very delicate situation, because how do we approach and realign a whole culture and create self-awareness?
Can You Take Us Step-by-Step Through Why It Was a Success?
With the internal L&D Director, we assessed the delicate need, along with skill sets and clearly defined what results we needed to create. This was a refreshing approach, to think about the end result and further integration based on the results BEFORE we started!
We created a very bespoke 3 day program commencing with V.P’s with a clearly defined goal, and some very delicate areas of implementation.
The 3 days started bumpy, as we suspected, but with many bespoke real live scenarios using everyone’s personalised Lumina Spark portraits, the lights of realisation started coming on and self- awareness and openness was huge.
At the end of this first three day program, we gave the future of this learning strategy back to the V.P’s to plan and suggest. They owned the learning strategy, which meant it was very likely to be a success.
We then rolled out many programs using Lumina across the whole organization in a staggered approach. The culture and paradigm shift of change was the fastest I had ever witnessed.
The one moment that will stay with me forever, was a local man, who stood up In front of all of his peers at the end and stated: ”I am now very aware that I do not treat people properly and I need to change my approach” – That’s a moment that reminds me why I do what I do!
What Do You Recommend Our Readers Do With This Strategy?
Use it as a firm reminder that:
A – It must come from the top down.
B – It is ALL about the people.
C – Empower staff and plan.
D – With the right approach organizational culture can shift rapidly, and stick!
How Does Lumina Learning Help Organizations?
Lumina Learning has created one of the newest development tools on the market, not by re-inventing the wheel, but by focusing on some unique areas; it embraces paradox and it measures both our introversion and our extroversion at the same time. It is not boxing, numbering or typing people; it gives a clear overview of typical traits and qualities.
Not only this; it measures the three personas, how all of these behaviours evolve in ones underlying state, everyday behaviours and overextended states. It is also very easy to understand, and is a lifelong tool.
So, it creates such a rounded development instrument, it is genuinely a fix it all tool with a focus on the people…it is also very economical and customisable so we don’t insist on licensing and locking organizations or people in.
It is firmly validated and creating huge success across 16 global offices.
How Can Our Readers Fnd Out More About You and Your Company?
You can call or email me at any time: paulajanecox@luminalearning.com
