Training & Development in Saudi Arabia

I was keynoting at the Global Conference on Training and Development in Riyadh last week.  It was my second conference there this year, this time being at Princess Nourah's womens university - built by a team of 25,000 people over the last two years and occupying a vast campus site towards the edge of Riyadh.   The conference provided another amazing experience with lots of good conversations with (at least the male) delegates and some great inputs from other presenters.

There seemed to be a heavy focus on leadership and talent - which I also presented on - as well as one less expected area, which was the importance of relationships (and which I'll post on again separately.)

On talent, I think I'd have liked Mary Crannell's session but unfortunately was delivering a workshop at the same time.  Plus the women presenters were speaking off stage and though I understand why that was the case within this culture, to me it would have reduced the quality of the learning experience so I traded in most of these sessions for more time sitting by the hotel pool.

I did see Mark Allen speaking about talent and thought he made some great points about some of the challenges and requirements for talent management, particularly the need for capable line managers.  And I think (hope) he was only joking about a 27 box grid!

In my keynote I built upon some of these challenges and added on the issues around bias which I think make it much harder to identify and develop clear and discreet talent groups in the way we sometimes believe.  I mentioned the role of nationals and also of women as talent groups and it was great to have so many women national students and practitioners in the audience.  I hope their learning experience wasn't too badly impacted by sitting so far away from the stage.

I concluded my presenting my recent thinking about talent slicing.  You can find out more by checking out my presentation on Slideshare (below).

GCETD Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Talent Keynote 
from Jon Ingham

 
You can also check out the slides from my sessions on evaluation, and integration:

• http://www.slideshare.net/joningham/gcetd-riyadh-saudi-arabia-integrated-talent-management-workshop

• http://www.slideshare.net/joningham/gcetd-riyadh-saudi-arabia-evaluation-workshop

 And you may also be interested in my posts from my visit to Saudi Arabia:

• #atdMENA Jack Phillips and the ROI of Talent Development

• #atdMENA Jenny Dearborn and Big Data Analytics in Saudi Arabia

•  Developing human capital in Saudi Arabia

Or contact me for more details:

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Photo credit (Talent Slicing): Al Harkan