I recently was in New York City on business and took advantage of a beautiful early Friday morning to walk from where I was staying, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and into Manhattan. As I approached the Manhattan side, a familiar landmark appeared: the Municipal Building. It was within this building, during an internship with the Department of General Services in graduate school, that I was first entrusted to design and facilitate a development program for employees who answered inquiries related to city services. At the time I arrived, they were doing a fairly poor job of it.

When we design and implement training and development programs for clients at TGC, we approach it fundamentally from a position of trust and belief—or in other words, we assume with openness, self-reflection, learning, and discussion that most if not all individuals can find their way through challenges to grow and prosper professionally. In spite of contrary prevailing wisdom in my field at the time, I approached my first assignment from this guiding principle. In three hours with this spirited group of devoted civil servants, we talked about our own experiences with call center staff—what pleased us and what frustrated us in these interactions. We also considered the profiles of the people calling into the city, how to use empathy to transform conversations, and how to understand the perspectives of others.

The outcome was spectacular—we received good feedback, and I was told before the end of the internship that it had positively impacted the experience for both the call center employees as well as their customers. Since that time I have leveraged my guiding principle to create rewarding learning experiences that have supported individual and team achievement across organizations in multiple disciplines, both public and private. That summer afternoon in the Municipal Building launched a rewarding career journey and solidified an approach that continues to drive successful learning and development programs globally for our clients.