IMPACT! CHOLearning 2026 The Community of Human and Organizational Learning’s 32nd Annual Learning Conference!
From June 22nd to 26th, our gathering at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, promises four immersive days packed with insights, innovation, and collaboration. Start the week with an array of workshops on Monday, kickstarting an enriching week, and explore the Co-Located workshops on Friday for a deeper dive into specialized topics.
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Safety professionals are often the most technically competent people in the room, and at the same time, struggle to gain influence. We were trained to control hazards, write procedures, and audit compliance. But organisations are not technical systems. They are social ones, communities of people whose behaviour is shaped by trust, status, and perceived value, not instruction. While rebuilding a 30-year-old Land Rover Defender for a 5,000-mile journey to the Arctic Circle, Andy discovered something revealing about expertise in complex systems. With enough knowledge to feel confident in fixing a steering problem, he replaced the part that seemed to be the solution, but the problem persisted. An experienced engineer explained the truth: steering is not a component; it is a system. Knowing one part is not the same as understanding how the whole behaves. Organisations behave the same way. Drawing on evolutionary psychology, resilience thinking, and boardroom experience, this keynote reframes organisational learning as an influence challenge: how to work with the organisation as a community. We explore leadership trust as a social risk assessment: “If I invest time, attention, or budget here, will it increase my status and business performance?” Once safety and learning professionals understand that calculation, influence becomes intentional and performance can scale. This keynote is developmental and deliberately identity-shifting. It moves participants from solving safety problems themselves to designing environments where others willingly contribute their expertise. Attendees will leave with a simple, immediately testable five-question influence sequence that builds cross-functional ownership, increases perceived value, and turns participation into contribution rather than enforcement. Growth requires risk. Community requires trust. And when decision-making shifts from control to contribution, organisations function as communities, and safety and performance improve together.
