The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

January 14, 2010
Ken Robinson

So what is “the element” and how can you find yours? To truly be in your element, both passion ad skill need to come together. People in their element find that time is experienced differently and energy levels are transformed; creating an environment in which people work in their element is likely to lead to far greater individual contribution, more employee engagement and, ultimately, a more productive economy.
Yet, our education system (and many of our corporate environments) are locked into obsolete ideas of intelligence, stifling creativity and keeping people from their “best selves”. We can learn from the paths of individuals-both famous and unknown-who have found their “element”; and thus create the learning and working conditions that allow us to live lives full of confidence and achievement.

Speaker Details

Sir Ken Robinson speaks to more than 50,000 people each year, and was voted Speaker of the Year by over 200 global companies. In 1998 he was invited by the UK government to establish and lead a national commission on creativity, education and the economy, and his report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to huge acclaim. He was a central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and the resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by all parties across the province. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his achievements in creativity, education and the arts and in 2008 he was awarded the Peabody Medal for outstanding cultural contributions to cultural relations between the US and the UK. His earlier book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative was an international bestseller, and his TED talk in 2006 is one of the most widely distributed talkson the web.