“What I most wish to accomplish is to have a world in which learning is some awesome and amazing instead of something obligatory “
Jeanne Bakker
Interviewer: Sarah Suliman
Brief Biography about the Interviewee:
Jeanne Bakker is a game-changing, idea-generating ball of fire whose rare blend of humour, substance and personality have made her one of the most memorable Trainers.
Voted Learning & Development Professional of the year 2020.
20 years in Learning and Development. 10.000 people. 1000 organizations. Speaker. Best-selling author. Three books. Human Relations Expert. Background in psychology and the science of education. Topics on influencing, sales, leadership, change, life balance and success. And (what we all probably could use now and then)…a Comedienne.
Specialties: Professional Speaker, Trainer of Trainers, Human Behavior Expert, Thought Leader in Learning & Development, sales, leadership, change & transformation, hospitality, productivity, work/life balance, career development, recruitment and retention.
Industry expert in: Retail, Sales, Hospitality, Automotive, Employability, Child-services, Franchises and Hotels.
Founder of Brain Bakery.
1- HR Revolution Middle East: Learning seems your passion and the message you want to spread worldwide. Has your younger version dreamt of learning what you learnt now?
Jeanne Bakker: I think I didn’t know as a child how much I could learn and the world of possibilities out there. I think as a child, there is so much that you don’t know that you don’t know so there is a world of possibilities. I do know of myself that I was always very curious into many different things but I was also super shy. So, growing up, I never thought of all the opportunities that I would get.
2- HR Revolution Middle East: With staple educational systems for kids worldwide and training programs for adults that mostly don’t encourage anyone to get the best out of these processes. Was this your only motivation behind Brain Bakery or there was something else?
Jeanne Bakker: I meet lots of children all the time and I see that many of them love to learn but as soon as you call it ‘learning’ then they don’t like it anymore. And I think that what we have been doing as a society with our schools is that we’ve made learning so much ‘top-down’ and so obligatory that many children almost lose their love of learning. And that’s why I’ve started the movement of ‘No More Boring Learning’. And I always try to challenge myself and the companies I work with and the participants I work with and the children I work with to make it even more exciting to learn such that people lose track of time and fill their brains, those magnificent machines up in our heads, with the most wonderful stuff all the time.
3- HR Revolution Middle East: Being a great supporter of football club, do you believe that your passion for football helped you develop a sense of team management skills?
Jeanne Bakker: What a great question! 😉 Yes, I do think that my passion for football helped me develop a sense of team management skills, absolutely. When you are fan of any sports, you always watch the sporter themselves and the players and you watch the coaches and the managers. And from that I think you can learn a lot. You can almost sense, especially in football when the team is having a great time and when the team is not heaving a great time. You can always observe the manager; what do they do? Do they get passioned, do they show anger, what do they do to motivate their team. And I think playing a sport yourself, which I did a lot, but also watching sports even if you’re not in the stadium can give a sense of learning and wanting to do better. And I think that’s fundamentally what sport is all about. Always wanting to do better but also dealing with a lot of setbacks and overcoming them.
4- HR Revolution Middle East: From mastering Psychology and Science of Education, how did both majors help you in building and improving your management and leadership skills?
Jeanne Bakker: To be quite honest I failed a lot in studying. I had so much to learn about life and living on my own that I started with psychology and started to fail a lot. But those failures also thought me a lot. And I think that one of the things as a leader you need to be able to do is to be able to fail and to make the best out of the failing and getting back up and, you know, dusting yourself of and reinventing yourself. So after my two years of failing in psychology I started to become really good at studying and even fanatical so that helped me a lot. And I think that if you look at leadership for anybody to complete any studies takes a lot of leadership because you have to create time, you have to have discipline, you have to, you know, be able to empower your own curiosity all the time. And I think that’s what’s giving me great strength in traveling the world and sharing my insights about learning with many people.
5- HR Revolution Middle East: “Brain, Impact, Audacity, Passion, Love and Adventure”; these are Brain Bakery’s values. Do you follow these values in your everyday life? How did they affect your life?
Jeanne Bakker: Brain always influences me. It’s so fantastic to know that there is 86 billion brain-cells in your brain and that they can make each of them, each single one of them can make 200.000 connections. That means that there is something so incredibly powerful and wonderful up in our heads that I am constantly in awe of that. And whenever I hear people talk about somebody else with a fixed mindset, of ‘oh they can’t do it’, I think you’re underestimating the enormous potential that is up there in anybody’s brain. So, brain is always a guiding principle anywhere in my life. And then I think with that comes lots of love. I think any program or design that I make, or my team makes always has to do with: how can we make the world a little bit better, a little bit more of a beautiful place. How can we show respect to any religion, to any walk of life, how can people come together and work together in great ways such that their work, which we usually touch makes them a lot better but also makes them greater human beings? And I think that’s part of our mission as well. They often come back in our life and with the COVID crisis right now, the changes of having an adventure outside of your own home are very diminished. I miss those adventures a lot. So, missing adventures and trying to create them in your own home is a lot harder than just going out in the world and traveling. I think the lowest one I’ve been on for the last three months has been adventure so it’s great to be connected through the Middle East right now, I love to travel and I love to come there more than be connected to you in the virtual way.
6-HR Revolution Middle East: Being a best-selling author is not something to be surprised of from you as your unfading passion, humor, great personality and astonishing experience is something worth to be combined in a book. What inspired you in writing your books?
Jeanne Bakker: My books where all inspired by what I wrote down as a 12-year old. I wrote down: I wanna write a book before I’m 40. So, I had these dreams about writing a book. I didn’t know what book at all but all three of my books that I’ve written so far have been inspired by my participants. By people around me saying something is impossible or something can’t be done… and then I thought let’s figure out if it really can’t be done and that’s my best-selling book ‘Dealing with Dragons’ is originated in there. There was a participant of me who said: “no no no Jeanne, I can’t influence that other person they truly are like a Dragon” and that’s why I wrote that book. So, most of my inspirations comes when people say something is impossible and then I try to figure it out anyway.
7-HR Revolution Middle East: 20 years in learning and development-along with being in 1000 organizations- was such a long journey for you to walk. Through your upcoming years, what do you wish to accomplish?
Jeanne Bakker: What I most wish to accomplish is to have a world in which learning is some awesome and amazing instead of something obligatory, something where you have to listen to others or something that’s Boring. I wanna touch as many people and as many Learning & Development professionals as possibly, humanly possible, such that we spread this sense of how awesome this learning is! And that learning is everything!
8-HR Revolution Middle East: Lastly, as the founder of Brain Bakery, how will you leave an impact on ATD conference participants?
Jeanne Bakker: I would love to instill a sense of wonder, curiosity and maybe even a sense of being challenged to all the participants to see, how can we make more beautiful programs or learning journeys. How can we challenge our learners even further such that learning becomes an experience that is full of wonder and full of hearts and full of awe…