Designing Transformative Experiences

Offering a new lens on leadership and living, this research-based guide shows how to design experiences that can touch hearts, provoke minds, and change lives in powerful ways.

Transformative experiences are life events that change our sense of self in important ways. How do they work? What elements do they require? How can we learn to design them intentionally?

By embracing the research-based approach of ELVIS (the Experiential Learning Variables and Indicators System), this book details how to recast yourself as an Experience Design Leader, one that can provide those in your organization with the opportunities needed to reflect and grow as individuals.

Beginning with the ELVIS Framework, you will gain deep foundational insight into how transformative experiences work. And then with the ELVIS Toolkit, which includes seven practical design elements, you will have the key to unlocking these powerful experiences for yourself and others.

Whether you are new to the idea of designing experiences for others or are a seasoned veteran, ELVIS shows you how to tap into the psychology operating behind the most powerful and important experiences of our lives—those that shape who we are.Introduction: The Nature of Transformative Experiences
 1. ELVIS Overview
 2. This May Hurt a Bit: Seeking "Discomfort Zone" Experiences
 3. Storifying Our Lives: Harnessing How We Translate Experience into Narrative
 4. Identity Construction Deconstructed
 5. Transformative Experience Design Strategies
 6. Risk
 7. Control
 8. Immersion
 9. Social and Emotional Involvement
 10. Intellectual Challenge
 11. Identity Matters
 12. Meaning Making
 13. The Holistic ELVIS
 14. Endings"Everyone can make a positive difference in this world. Often this requires us to change something about ourselves and the choices we make. This book will be especially valuable to those who are leaders, or aspiring leaders, in their field.  
—Dr. Jane Goodall, conservationist, primatologist, and UN Messenger of Peace
 
“We all have transformative experiences—two of the big ones are our birth and our death. One in all probability you can communicate; the other seems unlikely. In between are all our transformative experiences. Reading this book will be one.”
—William Shatner, author of Boldly Go
 
“This book is an invaluable resource that empowers leaders with practical tools and strategies to challenge people’s self-views and lead to expansions in their identity. It is a guide to transformations that yield the most meaningful kinds of professional and personal growth.”
—Dr. Paul Marciano, bestselllng author of Carrots and Sticks Don’t WorkBrad McLain, PhD, is a social scientist interested in the nature and psychology of transformative experiences, identity development, and leadership. He is the director of corporate research at the National Center for Women and IT, where he routinely works closely with companies such as Apple, Intel, Facebook, Google, and dozens of others. He is also the director of the Center for STEM Learning at the University of Colorado Boulder, has served on the board of directors for the Jane Goodall Institute, and chairs Dr. Goodall’s Roots & Shoots educational program national leadership committee. His TEDx and TEDx Youth talks, podcasts, and other work can be found online.The New View of Leadership Using the ELVIS Methodology