Transformative Spaces: Where Change Begin | Goals Lounge

Hi everyone, and welcome to Goals Lounge. Transformation is often something we think about in terms of strategies, plans, and systems. But it also depends on how we work together every day, how we listen, how we collaborate, and how we create space for new ideas and perspectives. That's the thinking behind Transformative Spaces, an initiative supported by partners across the UN system. It's focused on simple practices that can help build trust, strengthen inclusion, and create conditions for meaningful change. Today, we'd like to try one of those practices together. Before this event started, we invited all the participants here in the room and online to reflect on one question. As you think about navigating change in your own work, what do you need to create more space for? Okay, ready for the reveal? Let's see what you shared. This is that magical moment where we get a word cloud. So I see words like reflection comes out strong, family, patience, thinking, ideation, flexibility, awareness, calmness. I think calmness is one of those that we're going to hear about a lot more. And so let's take a look now at what this looks like in practice. And I'm going to introduce our moderator, Liliana, who's going to lead us in a conversation. Liliana, all over to you. Come on in.

Thank you, welcome, and I appreciate your patience as I'm stepping in last minute. But I'm very excited for this event, I've been very excited for weeks, and it's really an honor to be here between these two ladies. Diana Wu, David Wu, who works at ServiceNow, she's also an author, the book "Future Proof, Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration", I highly recommend it, it's absolutely brilliant, very practical, down to earth. She's actually director of Futures Now, and so she's going to help us look towards the future today. And then Laurel Patterson, who has been a supporter, a champion of transformation work. She is head of strategic partnerships and communications at UNDP's Crisis Bureau. She was formerly UNDP Senior Global Advisor for the SDG Integration Team and has led a great deal of transformation work with resident coordinators across UNDP and even including other agencies in that process. So in terms of the questions, Diane, I'm gonna start with you. Your book, as I mentioned, is called "Future Proof" and it's about reinventing work in this age of acceleration, how do we keep up as humans? When the pace of change outstrips our ability to plan for it, what does that mean for us? For us as individuals and not just as institutions to show up. In the past, we kind of depended on the institution to plan our careers, to drive our careers forward, to take care of us in a way. But that is something that's really changing.

Good morning. It's so nice to be here. And maybe you can relate to this moment when I wrote this book, which is I had been going through a huge restructuring, leading a restructuring at my company, then went into a digital transformation, I worked at Financial Times, and then went into corporate development, and then we got acquired. And so, you know, it was just like, "What's next?" Like, "Where are we gonna go?" And I decided to leave. And I decided I needed a break. And before that, I kind of, I looked up, right? After 10 years, I looked up and I was like, wow, everything's changed. Nobody told me, I didn't get the memo. And I think that what I'd always done was plan for change, plan for change, plan for change. And what I realized is that that was totally not working so well on an individual basis. And I remember saying, wow, like I haven't been planning for my change. And that was the genesis of this book. And what I did is I interviewed hundreds of people and have since then done that. This has been my kind of passion project. I'll be doing it till I die. And what I found was that you can't brittily forecast the future, even though I'm a futurist. but you can create capacity to meet the change that is coming. And that is really, I think, what we're here to talk about today and what I hope everybody leaves with is, you know, something that they can feel increases their capacity to meet change with grace.

I love that. I love that. It's about the internal transformation. That's what we're here to explore today, building those capacities. Laurel. Two years ago at Pact for the Future, you opened the launch event of Transformative Spaces with a mindfulness practice. From where you sit in UNDP, again, working in volatile areas, people in crisis, what separates the people who remain resilient and connected to the work that they're doing and the organizations that they're supporting to those that eventually burn out and disengage?

Thanks, Liliana. And thanks, it's good to be here with all of you. In my perspective, those are the same people. And so the perspective that I share from is I've been both of those people, disconnected, burned out, resilient, connected. And I think that's the reality at different points in our lives. It's gonna feel different and the context that we're in are gonna ask different things of us. And that moment of disconnection and that moment of burnout and disengagement is actually what brought me to bring these practices more fully into the UN system that I was working in. So I had left Somalia where I had been working for almost seven years after an attack. We lost a bunch of friends and colleagues and I was in the middle of a relationship that was ending and I had two little kids. And almost everything in that moment, it took me years to find solid footing, I disengaged. I did not invoke any of the practices that we would all hear on webinars. We know is the right thing to do, and I didn't do not one of them. It became really, really difficult. But that was the learning for me, and that was the opportunity to bring something different. When COVID hit and we started this work together on awareness-based systems change, I had those same sense of panic. Same feelings of anxiety, same questions, what am I doing and how did I get here? None of us could figure out the mute button. Everybody had cameras on. I mean, we all know what that moment was like for all of us. And I had an opportunity to engage with Otto Schormer, who leads the Presencing Institute, who is doing a lot of work. And he asked this fundamental question, why do we collectively produce results that nobody wants? Why does that happen? And part of the premise and very similar, Diana, to what you were saying is this fundamental premise is that for the external change, Anne-Marie started with this same idea, the data, the systems, the advocacy, the partnerships, fundamentally, outer transformation starts with inner shifts. It starts with us. And so all of those practices of my own rebuilding and recovering, I realized weren't just for me at home or just for Laurel after five or 6:00 PM, but were actually fundamental to the way that we were working. And so I hope we'll get a chance to talk about some of those practices today, some of those approaches. We ended up writing a field guide for how to take generative conversations into really tough places with our partners. For me, the key has always been, how do we understand these practices and opportunities for ourselves and bring it into the way that we work? I was saying to Diana before we started, almost all of us, our familiarity as UN staff and personnel is living in other people's countries. We're always with a range. I was saying, I can't imagine even in this room of the colleagues that are assembled today, how many languages are spoken and how many nationalities are represented. But it calls on something different of us at a moment that the world is changing and that the UN is changing. And so again, I hope some of these practices can help us weather where we are right now and take that forward in a way that builds resilience, it builds strength. It's not a given, but yeah, my sense for the many people that we've engaged with over the past couple of years, the opportunity is there for us to come together. Thanks.

Thank you. I appreciate both of you sharing vulnerability. I think perhaps maybe part of the practice is also allowing people to be their full human selves, right? That we can be vulnerable, we can be disengaged for a period if we need, and that we don't have to be a certain way all the time in the work environment. Diana, back to you. We think of well-being as something separate, right? And that's what I'm saying, like the well-being, your health, your personal life, that's something separate from work. But this is our whole life, right? Our whole life, it's not, we cannot compartmentalize so distinctly. You know, something that you do after work, but it's not. As a mother, I know that it's a 24/7 job. Someone who's studying the future, where work is heading, Do you think wellbeing should actually be part of the infrastructure that makes transformation possible? And what does that look like in practice?

It's a really interesting question because I do feel like we treat wellness like a reward for job well done. Like we get to go on vacation, we've been working so hard, but it's kind of the prerequisite for any truly good transformation. to happen. And I love the idea of, you know, that you brought up of having better conversations and that kind of thing. This morning, my son who just moved here, we spent 25 years in Hong Kong and he's never lived in America. And he, like, he slept one hour and I was trying to have a good conversation with him and, you know, it wasn't really working, but for either of us, but it just made me think, and I drove him to school 'cause he missed the bus. And he said, "So what are you talking about?" And I was like, "You know that conversation we were trying to have this morning that I was trying to have with you? That's what I'm talking about today at the UN." And as you can see, I've got sick in the process of all this transition, but it's hard to have good conversations. It's another thing that I've started. I actually... have been in boards. I've been at the World Bank, Asia Development Bank, teaching about good conversations and conflict, which is what I say when people go, okay, when when AI is here and that shifts what we're doing. And so, so many of us, we have a lot of problems in the world that you are all working on. But AI is is a big transformation that is hitting a lot of people. And that's where I spend a lot of my time now. And what I find is that it's actually hard because all of a sudden it's taking away some of the routine things that you did that you thought you didn't wanna do, but provided a breather a bit. And now the amount of judgment that you have, that that's becomes a much more intense part of your job, the trying to communicate between different people. I always say that if AI takes a lot of these different pieces of our job, these tasks that are more rote, that we could all spend time learning to be more present, to be better humans. 'Cause I don't think we're actually that good at it and having good conversations, investing in our wellbeing enough to be present, to be with each other, to avoid collectively your terrifying comment, collectively working really hard on outcomes nobody wants. Like those are what we have to play for at a really fundamental level. And I think that investing in your wellbeing and having the time to do that, reflection, when I saw that word cloud, to me, I was like, reflection is about time. If you had just put this big, word in the middle that said time, I want more time. And then I want to use it well. I want to use it to spend time with people I love. I want to spend time with other people having really deep connected conversations. I want to do great work together. We all have pretty common goals. And so I see a future where if we are redesigning the actual work well, that we can have more time for that. We can have time for well-being. But as somebody who now gets well-being days every quarter and sometimes doesn't take them, you also have to remember, too, that transformation rests on your capacity. And if you're not taking care of yourself, then you are not going to be up for that challenge.

Absolutely, absolutely. Is there something that leaders and managers can do to help create those environments? Is there something you've seen that works?

You know, we just did a huge event, and I've thought a lot about this. I mean, one of course is role modeling. We have a culture where the banner says it's a wellbeing day, And every weekend we spend all the time working. And all of our managers do that. And sometimes people ask for meetings on a Saturday. And there is no company in the whole wide world with that culture. You can have as many well-being days as you want, and nobody will take them. So I think as a manager, you really need to be conscious of that, because Your own workaholism does not have to be somebody else's problem. And those of us who are really passionate about our jobs do that more often, and we call it passion, and that's not always fair. And the other thing is to say thank you, to really pause. I did a lot of research once on this, rewards, recognition. I have a new report coming out with a think tank about performances and incentives. I could get so excited about it that once I ran a global sales team and I designed this entire performance enhancement mechanism and at the end of it, they said, "Could we just have an extra month at the end of the year?" 'Cause they were so confused. So, you know, I don't think you can overthink it. I think it's literally take time to send a video to the people who are working so hard on your team just to say thank you. Write a thank you note. Take the time. Nobody takes that time anymore. And say, "Thank you, I see what you're doing." And maybe go take a day off, because I noticed that you haven't taken a day off. I mean, how many people's managers have done that, you know, or how many people who are a manager have noticed somebody in their team struggling and said, "You, Take the afternoon off and just go for a walk. You just look like you need it. Because we're human.

I love that. I love that. Laurel, transformation requires people to work together differently. Listening, building trust, challenging assumptions, co-creating solutions. From your experience, what helps to create that kind of space within teams, particularly when people are under pressure?

Maybe two ideas here. So the first in terms of pressure, when we experience pressure, things tend to contract. So meetings become shorter, answers come faster, contemplative time is out the window, right? It's a very contracted space. So I think the opportunity, even in opening up a meeting to simply check in, some of the simple but very powerful practices that Diana is mentioning makes a difference. we have a little visual plus up to five and zero down to minus five, just a basic quadrant. Where are you today? Just tend to put that up and take a look at it. It's a very simple way of reminding us that somebody just dropped their kid off late to school who missed the bus. Somebody was up all night for a different reason. We have all of these things we tend not to see, but of course we're not different just because we stepped into the office, right? It's not severed. Here we are ourselves, and yet we tend to shut things and turn them back on. So I think some of those practices make a big difference. But the other advice that I would give in that respect is self-organize. So a lot of the feedback when we started our work on awareness-based systems change, the first question that people ask me is, did you have permission? The answer is no, it didn't even occur to me because it was COVID and we were all disconnected and my job had integration in the title. So I ran with it. And that evolved in different ways for different people. But again, you are all such unique and powerful people doing the work that you're doing. What does it look like for you? And what would stop you from bringing more of it into a collective space? Our work is so personal in many ways, and our work, so much of us are driven by purpose and mission in so many ways. So that disconnection for me started to feel very false, even though there's risks, did you get permission? Who are you to speak in this way? Did somebody say you could hold a meeting like this, et cetera, right, it will come through. But I would really encourage you to think what it means for you and then self-organize. In those early years of doing this work, and now this is one of the leadership curricula for UNDP senior leadership, so it has come through. And all of the colleagues who contributed to a lot of the UN 2.0 work, we tried to connect them in different ways too with this as a background. So we look for all these different ways to do it, self-organize. One of the biggest points of feedback that we got is that it's great in a room like this, we all feel connected, you all came here for a reason, then you go back to your day job, it's a tough re-entry. And what we wouldn't want is that that then prevents you or you think maybe it's hopeless or this is futile or this works at home, but my colleagues would never go for this. That kind of a feeling is really common. So again, find allies, look for supporters. At the end of the work that we've done, and a lot of culminated in the transformative spaces. There's dozens of entities, there's procurement officers to senior leaders, to analysts, to everybody finds their way. So I would say make that effort to reach out beyond, take the risk. Take the risk. And I remember some colleagues saying to me, "God, you're very brave." And that was the first point that I got really worried. So I thought, what do I need to be, really? Is this gonna fail? Did I do something really, it hadn't occurred to me in those terms. So if it doesn't occur to you in those terms, good, then don't do it. But if it does, challenge a little bit why, because the UN needs, well, we're broadcasting this beyond the UN, but my sense for anybody that's joining this conversation needs you. It needs you. It needs more of you, not less of you. So look for those opportunities in those spaces. And I hope Transformative Spaces is one of them.

Absolutely, Laura. That's a perfect segue. I hope to see all of you at a Transformative Spaces workshop in the future. The feedback that we've been getting from those who participate is that there is a desire for more practical things that people can do on a daily basis, and how can you contribute. As mentioned, we're all busy, people are busy, people are under pressure. It's not easy to just go off and do something completely new, but these small steps that we can all take each day, looking out for our co-workers, looking out for our staff, et cetera, and just knowing that we're all part of this. system, this multilateral system, part of the bigger world in our societies. And the more we internalize our own change for the positive, the more impact we'll have on the rest. I am going to take this moment now to actually turn it over to Rob, who's going to lead us through a practical breath work. And Rob Rea is a breathwork and performance coach who works with people to develop greater awareness and control of their physiological and mental state, using the breath and simple mindfulness-based practices as practical tools for performance, resilience, and well-being. And I can, I promise you, because I also have similarly gone through a very disengaged period, deep breathing is amazing. I've never been a person who was like into meditation or all of that, but it really does work. So I'm very excited to have Rob come up here. His session is going to give us all here an opportunity to experience rather than just talking, listening to us speak, but to actually experience what this means and how it affects our bodies and our minds. How to become more present, regulating our response so we're not reacting from that reptilian mind, immediately reacting to everything out of fear or flight, and to create the space that we need. So Instead of talking any further, let's take a few minutes to experience it with Rob. Thank you, Laurel and Diana. It's amazing being with here here today. Thank you all for being here. Rob, please. Thank you.

Hi, everybody. So we're going to experience a little bit today and my invitation to you initially is to simply just let the eyes soften. You don't need to close them just yet. But just maybe you've been sitting really still listening to that. In fact, I was in the room, I can see that you were all sitting still. So take a moment just to make yourself comfortable, maybe move the neck, just let the shoulders move and just soften the eyes, okay? You're not necessarily going to focus a lot, just maybe tune in without moving your head a lot to the colours in the room. Maybe you can see the greens, the forest greens, the different shapes. Try not to put too much label on, that's a TV, that's an Irishman, that's a plant. Just start to receive the information through your eyes, through our visual sensors. We take in so much information. It can be overwhelming as well. So just start to just be in this space wherever you are, whether you're in this room, whether you're online. And then as it feels safe to do so, if it feels safe to do so, you can start to let the eyes gently close. Just soften the eyes, soften the skin around the sides of the eyes. And if you do have your eyes closed, just notice where they're looking. Are you looking straight? Are you looking upwards? Are you looking downwards? If the eyes are closed, sometimes people who are feeling a little bit stressed, they're actually looking upwards and this activates the feelings of anxiety. So just allow everything to soften. Maybe the eyes come down a little bit underneath the eyelids. Then if that feels good, my invitation is to move the awareness to what you can hear right now. Maybe it's the white noise of the room that you're in. Maybe it's the sound of your breath, the sound of my voice, the tones of music. And again, just let them all come the same way that you'll maybe let the rain rain or the wind blow. You're letting all the sounds come in. Without the analysis, without the story, without the, it should be more peaceful, it should be this. Just allow everything to be in this moment. And then let the awareness move to what you can feel. If you're sitting down, maybe you can feel the seat, the seat bones, you can feel the back. Don't try to change anything at this moment. Simply, I'm inviting you to sense and feel the body. Gently move the awareness to what you can taste. Any sense of taste in the mouth, saliva in the mouth, what's your tongue doing in the mouth? Let it relax. Any tension in the jaw, let it soften. Think of a baby sleeping. Then I want you to bring all of your awareness to the air passing through the tip of your nose. Gently move on to the next slide, please. Sense Maybe there's a nostril that is taking in more air. It's the left nostril, it's the right nostril. Don't change anything, but really try to be precise and subtle. Can I sense the temperature of the air moving in through the nose? Can I feel the hairs in my nose gently moving as I inhale? Maybe there's thoughts passing by in the mind and you're thinking I can't do this, this is difficult today. Allow them to pass by. No judgment, simply just witnessing what's going on. Try to bring all of your awareness to that tip of the nose. If it's straight away. And then draw a gentle line from the tip of the nose to your left ear. And then just for a moment, almost with a beginner's mind, just try to experience this moment through your left ear. Try to listen to my voice through your left ear. Play a game, how far away is the furthest sound I can hear through my left ear? How close is the closest sound? Draw a line from the left ear across to the right ear and for a moment see if you can measure that distance between the left ear and the right ear. If you've drawn a line, what colour is the line? What texture is the line? Does it go straight across? Does it go up over the head? And then just bring all of that awareness to the right ear. Any sensation, any feeling, any tingling. And maybe it's the first time you've thought about having a right ear on the side of your head. Listen to my voice through your right ear and almost try to listen for the silence in between my words, in between the notes of music, or in between any other sound that you can hear. Imagine that you were drawing a little picture of your right ear on a piece of paper. And then try to make a distinction, am I feeling my right ear in that way that I've drawn it, that I can see it on a piece of paper? Or is it just simply a cloud of sensation? Draw a line from the right ear up to the crown of the head. This is the highest point in your head. And then from the crown of the head all the way down to the base of the chin. And I just want you to see if you can sense and feel air around the skin at the base of the chin. Notice has the tongue moved in the mouth? Is there any tension in the jaw? Move gently on in the slides please. Draw a line from the base of the chin back up to the tip of the nose and just for a moment can you sense and feel which nostril is taking in more air, which nostril is taking in less air, it feels Warmer on the exhale, cooler on the inhale. For the next two to three minutes, I want you to join me just breathing in for three to four seconds and breathing out for five to six seconds. In through the nose and out through the nose. Just follow my lead. Inhale, two, three, four. And exhale, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, tucking into the belly. Exhale, three, two, one. Inhale through the nose. Exhale, six, five, four, three, two, one, inhale. Exhale. Inhale, two, three, four, exhale. Keep following that rhythm and ask yourself just in this moment, how am I feeling? What do I need in this moment? Maybe it's a rest. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's to see someone. Maybe it's a bereavement. Gentle inhale. Exhale for six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale. Exhale. Allow your softening to happen. The side of the eyes, at the shoulders. Almost like you're floating down into your surface in your seat. Inhale. Exhale gently. Inhale. Exhale. Again, just noticing thoughts maybe flying through the head, imagining like you're sitting at the side of a highway. Cars going past, representing your thoughts. Every once in a while you'll notice that you're in one of those cars, probably your subconscious is driving, you're in the passenger seat. And behind the story, the emotion, the narrative. Try to stay with the breath, inhaling. Exhaling. Again, coming back to that question, how am I feeling? Move gently on to the next slide, please. I'm going to introduce the concept of stress. Why would you do that, Rob? Stress is not the enemy. We're not trying to necessarily eliminate the feeling of stress. We're trying to give ourselves the confidence, the agency, and the ability to work with it. So in the next 90 seconds, I'm going to make a loud, obnoxious sound. This is your warning and in about 90 seconds it's not going to be pleasant. I hope some of you haven't fallen asleep on me. And my invitation to you after I make the sound is to notice what happens in your body because you will have a physiological reaction and then a psychological reaction. Inhale two, three, four and exhale. Good. Just notice maybe there's laughter, maybe there's 'I hate this person, why did he do that to me?' Notice maybe the saliva has left the mouth, maybe you feel a little bit of a scratch underneath the armpit. This is the sympathetic response, this is fight or flight. My invitation here for you is to see how you react to that feeling of stress in the body because as we get emails through the day or have difficult conversations, that is stress and that's what's happening to your physiology throughout the day. So a beautiful tool to bring yourself back down. I'm not going to make any more sounds. We can all soften and relax again, I promise. We're going to breathe in for three seconds, we're going to hold for three seconds, we're going to exhale for six seconds. Maybe the heart is beating, now it's just starting to gently come back. Inhale, two, three, hold. Exhale, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, Hold your breath, just really softly, but soften the shoulders. Exhale, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale. Hold the breath, just sense, and then exhale for five, four, three, two, one. Inhale. Hold your breath. Exhale. Five, four, three, two, one. Inhale. Pull gently. Exhale softly. Try to do three or four more like this by yourself. You're inhaling, you're holding, you're exhaling. You're inhaling, you're holding, you're exhaling. Allowing yourself to ask, how am I feeling right now? What is it that I need right now? What do I need? You can gently move on the next slide. The invitation now is to simply Bring to mind something in your life that you're grateful for. Whether it's a person, a pet, a time of your life, an experience that you've had. Just notice how the body breathes whenever you truly allow yourself to bathe in that state or that feeling or that memory. Noticing how that feels in the body. And you don't actually need to bring a smile to your face, but I want you to have the feeling that you're having a little smile of self-discovery. Maybe it's at the lips, maybe it's at the eyes, maybe it's down at the heart. If you're sitting, you can feel the soles of the feet on the ground. You can feel the seat bones on the chair, feel your back body against the surface of the seat. And let the awareness move towards what can I hear? The silence is always available. It's my voice that punctuates the silence. It's the tones of the music punctuate the silence. Stillness is always available. Gonna take five nice deep breaths in through the nose. We're gonna relax the jaw and let the exhale move out through the mouth. Come with me. Inhale. Relax the jaw, open the mouth, exhale. Inhale through the nose. Relax the jaw, open the mouth, exhale. Three more. Inhale. Relax the jaw, open the mouth, exhale. Inhale. Relax the jaw, open the mouth, exhale. Last one. Inhale. Relax the jaw, open the mouth, exhale. Coming back to the visual field, you can start to soften up the eyes, maybe you can blink them open, start to take in the colours in the room. Stretch if you need to stretch, move if you need to move. Thank you so much for joining me here on an online. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for.

Feel like I should come on and speak quietly. I hope everyone in the room or maybe online is quite come out of that. Yeah, that was amazing. I think this is one of the sessions that we might all want to go back to and just do again. So I think it'll be a huge help as we go through into the UN General Assembly. But Rob, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

So I'm going to wrap the session. Thanks to Rob and thanks to all of our speakers and everyone here and a sewing line that Joy has today. Today's but also about how we show up, how we listen, how we connect, pause, and respond. The invitation now is to take one small part of today or maybe one or two things because there's so many that will help us during the German Assembly. One small part of today with you and bring it into your everyday work. Thank you for being a part of it and Please check out the Goals Launch program for the rest of the General Assembly. I hope you'll join us again.

Thank you. Thank you.